History

The painting from which this engraving is taken, An English Merry-Making a Hundred Years Ago, was first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1847. It was once among Frith’s most popular and instantly recognisable creations and a full chapter was devoted to it in Frith’s later autobiography

The original painting was first titled A Village Festival before later being retitled An English Merry-Making a Hundred Years Ago. The scene itself was drawn from a passage in John Milton’s Pastoral poem of 1645, L’Allegro.

The following lines by Milton were printed in the catalogue for the 1847 Royal Academy;

‘When the merry bells ring round,/ And jocund rebecks sound/ To many a youth and many a maid/ Dancing in the chequered shade,/ And young and old come forth to play/ On a sunshine holiday.’

Every aspect of the scene was studied from life including the great oak tree, copied from an ancient specimen to be found in Windsor Great Park.

All the figures in the picture were drawn from life. The young women depicted were the friends and sisters of Frith’s wife Isabelle while the jolly older lady sat at the board on the right of the picture was the Frith’s washerwoman. The Grandfather being led to the dance was based on an old man from the Paddington Workhouse while the model for the gypsy fortune-teller on the left was a woman who sold matches round the houses in Regent’s Park. The central figure in the composition, requesting a dance from a seated maiden, was modelled by the artist Tommy Banks, an old school friend of Frith’s.